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Besieged Nahariya
The northern town of Nahariya was founded by German Jews in 1933 on the coast approximately 40 km north of Haifa. Its only land link to the northern postal center of Haifa was the coastal road through Arab Acre. British Postal Service came to end with a phone call to the local postmaster on March 14, warning him of cessation of services for the following day. Just 2 days later the coastal road came under Arab control on March 17. To make matters even more dire, the U.N. partition plan assigned Nahariya and several other Jewish settlements of the western Galilee to the Arabs. Although separated by only 30 miles, the siege of Nahariya made Haifa a universe away. It was only with the fall of Acre to the Carmeli Brigade of the Hagana on May 17 that this situation resolved. When the road from Haifa was blocked, several Nahariya residents were stranded until March 20, when they safely navigated home by sea having chartered a motorboat from the OGEN cooperative. Dov Jeremias, the local commander of the Mishmar HaAm (National Guard) took note of this and thereafter adopted this sea route to convey personnel, ammunition and goods to the besieged town. Beginning March 22, the Haifa based OGEN Shipping Agency, provided a sea-based postal service shuttling between Nahariya and Haifa. Payment for this delivery service to the Haifa Post Office was over and above the regular postage for mail delivery. Initially the Military Mishmar HaAm oversaw the service and payment of this fee was marked by cancellations. On April 23, Gershon Tatz, as chair of the Emergency Town Council (VaAdat Hamatzav) announced the change to a civilian management proscribing a 10 mils fee for postcards, 20 mils for letters and 50 mils for parcels with an surcharge for inbound mail of 10 mils. Two days later, on April 25 the original “Emergency Post” release was issued. Although the Council at first turned to a professional designer in Haifa, ultimately it was a resident of Nahariya, Lubrani, along with a local printer who designed the stamps. The release was in 5000 sets of 3 denominations (10, 20 and 50 mils) with 1000 being imperforate (April 25) and 4000 rouletted (April 28). They were arranged on sheets with 2 blocks of 4 with a vertical gutter. Many of the reported “errors” of this release were in reality printers’ waste or even philatelic productions. Two constant plate flaws are recognized however: the inverted “t” in Post in the blue 10 mils denomination and the absent “s” in mils on the red 20. A second printing on May 16 encompassed a 24,000 issue of similar sheets (8,000 each of 10 and 20 mils with 6,000-50 mils) differing only in that: 1) wording “Emergency Mail” rather than Post. 2) All were imperforate sheetlets. 3) Primarily, these were printed as four stamp sheets but there were also the more rarely found sheets with two blocks of four. In celebration of the declaration of statehood, a souvenir sheet was printed featuring all three of the second issue stamps, each in its own color on buff paper, and were available on May 16th as either mint or cancelled form. Errors are found with an elongated Daled in Yesod or shifted/absence of one of the three stamps amongst others. Additionally Municipality Tax stamps of 10 and 11 mils were issued in sheets of 10 and were used as a surcharge on inbound mail using the sea route for delivery, beginning April 25. Both stamps feature the then coat of arms of the city and were made available as plain brown paper covered books of 10 sheets of 5 X 2 stamps. Of note the 11 mils stamp actually represented postage of 10 mils and was used in lieu of the 10 mils stamp for a short period due to shortages. The service was suspended on May 21 when overland delivery resumed. Section heading Write the first section of your article here. Section heading Write the second section of your article here.